Sunday, June 1, 2014

The Secret Origin Of Mighty (Hour) Mouse?!?

So, if you read this week's Friday Night Fight, you know something about the effect of Hourman's wonder drug, Miraclo, on animals.

But what you might not have known, is that Hourman started out testing the formula on animals...


See, this is a modern retelling of a Golden Age origin. So instead of developing the drug and immediately testing it on himself, like a true olde tyme scientist would, Rex Tyler is using lab rats. Well, a lab rat.

Rasputin? Oh, Rex, you don't name the test animals you're giving potentially deadly chemicals to!

But...
Here he comes to save the day!!










You know, Rasputin's probably still alive...his exposure to Miraclo (and the earlier versions that "didn't work") granting him rat immortality, enabling him to survive over the decades...wandering the globe, desperately seeking out more of the Miraclo, trying to feed the monkey that's been on his back for 80 years...gradually evolving into a larger, more human-looking form, to menace anyone who gets between him and his sweet, sweet drug. Rasputin, the rat who cannot die...

And once again we see why I'm not allowed to write comic books.

Meanwhile, Hourman gets more and more...problematic as time goes by. Illegal animal experimentation? Addictive performance-enhancing drugs? What's next, Rex--marketing Miraclo in Third World countries to test it? Falsifying data submitted to the FDA to get it approved? Wining and dining doctors to get them to prescribe it? No wonder the nu52 hasn't come anywhere near Hourman in the reboot...

From Secret Origins #16 (1987)

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